Chris Van Hollen: “I thank my colleague, Mr. McGovern, who said it exactly right. This unfortunately is another political gimmick we've…”

“I thank my colleague, Mr. McGovern, who said it exactly right. This unfortunately is another political gimmick we've seen from our Republican colleagues, and it is exactly why the American people hate this Congress so much. Rather than doing something to create jobs, rather than doing something to help support the economy, this does absolutely nothing other than point fingers at the President because his budget is a little late and then tell the President that he has to submit a budget that meets the Republican requirements rather than what we've done with every other President, which gives them the ability to present the budget they like. With respect to the delay, our Republican colleagues know very well what the cause of that delay was. The cause of the delay was we were working very hard to try and avoid the fiscal cliff, which would have hurt jobs and the economy. I'm not surprised some of our Republican House colleagues have forgotten about that because they overwhelmingly voted against the fiscal cliff agreement, which by the way was supported by the overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans. But here in the House, Republicans in great numbers said that they would rather risk the economy and risk jobs than ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay a little bit more. {time} 1340 That's why the fiscal cliff agreement took so long. We didn't get it done until January 2.…”